Terrible Tsarinas

shake off the yoke of Menshikov and to liberate Peter II from a

humiliating guardianship.

Alas! June 1, 1727, the young bishop Charles Augustus was

carried off by smallplox. Overnight, Elizabeth found herself with

no suitor, no more marital hopes. After Louis XV balked, she now

had lost another pretender — less prestigious, certainly, than the

King of France, but a very honorable match for a Russian grand

duchess. Really, fate seemed dead set against her dreams of mar-

riage. She lost heart, took a strong dislike to the court of St. Pe-

tersburg and withdrew, with her putative brother-in-law Charles

Frederick and her sister Anna, to the palace of Ekaterinhof, at the

edge of St. Petersburg, under the shade trees of an immense park

surrounded by canals. In this idyllic setting, she relied very much

upon the affection of her close relations to help her ease her disap-

pointment.

The very same day of their departure, Menshikov gave an

extravagant feast at his palace in honor of the betrothal of his

elder daughter, Maria, to the young Tsar Peter II. The intended,

bedecked and bejeweled like a gilded coffer, received on this occa-

sion the title of Her Most Serene Highness and the guarantee of an

annual income of 34,000 rubles from the State Treasury. More

parsimonious when it came to compensating the Tsarevna2 Eliza-

beth, Menshikov only allocated 12,000 rubles to her to assuage the

rigor of her mourning.3 But Elizabeth wanted to be seen by one

and all as an inconsolable fiancée. The fact that she was not yet

married (by the age of 18), and that only the most ambitious

seemed interested in her — and only out of political considera-

tions — was too cruel a fate to be swallowed anytime soon. For-

tunately, her friends immediately set about finding a high-quality

substitute for Charles Augustus, in Russia or abroad. The dear

departed’s coffin had hardly been laid in the ground in Lübeck

when the possible candidature of Charles Adolf of Holstein was

< 37 >

Terrible Tsarinas

suggested — the proper brother of the departed — and also that

of Count Maurice of Saxony and several other gentlemen of easily

verifiable merits.

While Elizabeth, at Ekaterinhof, was dreaming over these

various parties, whose faces she barely recognized, in the heart of

St. Petersburg Menshikov, as ever a practical man, was studying

the available bachelors’ relative advantages. In his eyes, the half-

widowed tsarina represented an excellent bargaining chip in the

diplomatic negotiations that were underway. But these matrimo-

nial concerns did not make him lose sight of the education of his

imperial pupil. Observing that Peter seemed to have become

slightly less extravagant recently, he recommended to Ostermann

that he step up his struggle against his pupil’s natural idleness by

accustoming him to fixed hours, whether they be spent in study

or recreation. The Westphalian was assisted in this task by

Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky, the “assistant governor”; he

often visited the palace with his young son, Prince Ivan, a beauti-

ful, hot-blooded young man of 20 years, elegant and effeminate,

who amused His Majesty with his inexhaustible chattering.

Upon her return from Ekaterinhof, where she had spent a

few weeks in sentimental retirement, Elizabeth installed herself at

the Summer Palace; but not a day went by that she did not pay a

visit, with her sister Anna, to her dear nephew in his gilded cage.

They would listen to the confidences of the spoiled child, share

his passion for Ivan Dolgoruky — that irresistibly handsome

young man — and keep them both company in their nightly rev-

els. Despite the remonstrances of their male chaperons, a wind of

madness blew through this shameless quartet. In December 1727,

Johann Lefort brought the minister at the court of Saxony up to

date on young Peter’s escapades. “The master [Peter II] has no

other occupation but to run in the streets, day and night, with the

princess Elizabeth and her sister, to visit the chamberlain Ivan

< 38 >

Machinations around the Throne

[Dolgoruky], the pages, the cooks and God knows whom else.”

Hinting that the sovereign under supervision had unnatural tastes

and that the delightful Ivan was inciting him in forbidden pleas-

ures instead of curbing his inclinations, Lefort continued: “One

could almost believe that these misguided people [the Dolgoru-

kys] are encouraging the various vices by fostering [in the Tsar]

the sins of the Russia of the past. I know an apartment contigu-

ous to the billiard parlor where the deputy governor [Prince

Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky] hosts pleasure parties for him. . .

they don’t go to bed until 7:00AM.”4

That these young people should satiate their appetites in

such entertainment suited Menshikov just fine. As long as Peter

and his aunts continued to dope themselves in love intrigues and

casual affairs, their political influence would be nil. On the other

hand, the “Most Serene One” feared that Duke Charles Frederick